Tender Coconut Punch

As per an old Swedish proverb “A life without love is like a year without summer”. I completely subscribe to the thought behind that lovely proverb, although I am not sure how many Indians would have that feeling for the summers. This month of May sun has been overbearing. As we crank up the air conditioning at home and offices to make it little cooler, I often see people become crankier in summers. As mercury raises so do our temper, which is why we witness increased level of honking in traffic and road rage incidents during summers.

It is very important to stay sufficiently hydrated, failing to do so would make you more anxious and irritable. In summers, we need to be wary of dehydration- lack of sufficient water in the body. Best way to avoid dehydration is to drink water before you get thirsty. However, if you do exhaustive workout or spend most of your day under the sun then only water won’t help. You must ensure to replenish the levels of sodium and potassium in your body that goes down with perspiration. I use electrolyte based sports drink during my workout. However, sometimes I do prefer natural energy drinks like coconut water. Coconut water contains high amount of potassium and small amount of sodium that can help you in keeping dehydration at bay.

I usually like to try and make different kind of smoothies, juices, thick-shakes that I can consume after my running routine. You can see all the cool drink recipes here . I must admit this tender coconut punch recipe is my favorite one. We learnt this recipe during our trip to Goa couple of years back. We happened to stumble upon this drink at one of the beach side shacks. I ordered my customary choice of beer and Missus after spending ages going through the menu decided to go with tender coconut punch. We liked the drink so much that during the course of next 4 days we had that same drink several times. A bit of cajoling and missus knowing fair bit of Konkani language did the trick and shack owner shared his humble recipe with us.

A Punch is said to be of an Indian origin and went to United Kingdom along with the employees of East India Company and some sailors in early 17th century. It derives its name from Sanskrit “Panch” which means five, as the conventional punch that originated in India was made up of five essential ingredients alcohol, sugar, lemon, spices and water. So our recipe of Tender coconut punch contains five ingredients, but we have managed to keep alcohol out of the recipe.